I've decided to paint all of the main aluminum pieces on my 1989 H18, including the crossbars, mast, boom, and rudder pieces. I could do the original black color, or go with silver, which stays much cooler to touch and won't fade as quickly. Any good reason not to go with silver?

Clean silver might look really cool. For what it's worth, I painted my entire rudder assembly (castings, arms, tiller cross bar) with Rustoleum "Hi-Heat" grill spray paint in flat black. There is a night and day difference from how everything looked before and it's holding up great. No fading, chips or scratches. I'm going to do my crossbars next. Rustoleum also makes this paint in a flat silver.

I run a pentex squaretop on mine and love it! You can really feel the puffs with the extra sail so high up. Makes you wish the bows were larger at times. Your boat may be a true "Formula 18" the year model is close and the white metal is one of the key indicators. To bad they don't make green pentex!

I called Rustoleum tech support and told them what I was doing, with durability as the #1 goal. Their answer was the new "Universal" paint. I primed all of the pieces with their aluminum primer and then color coated with two coats of Satin Black, which it was until I waxed it a couple of weeks later. I used Meguires with quite a bit of pressure and it changed the satin finish to a nice semi-gloss and looks fantastic. The paint took a LONG time to fully dry, meaning weeks. I could scratch it with a fingernail for at least two weeks. It's been over a month now and its really hard and durable. Time will tell just how durable it really is, but they said it should last 5 years if I take care of it. I plan to re-wax each year.

I run a pentex squaretop on mine and love it! You can really feel the puffs with the extra sail so high up. Makes you wish the bows were larger at times. Your boat may be a true "Formula 18" the year model is close and the white metal is one of the key indicators. To bad they don't make green pentex!